Now, as a matter of fact, there are few things more pathetic than the
feeling that sometimes steals over the best of men, that there is
nothing in them to attract the affection, the friendship, and the
confidence of others. The classical instance is the case of Mark
Rutherford. How his lonely soul ached for comradeship! 'I wanted a
friend,' he says. 'How the dream haunted me! It made me restless and
anxious at the sight of every new face, wondering whether at last I had
found that for which I searched as if for the kingdom of heaven. God
knows that I would have stood against a wall and have been shot for any
man whom I loved as cheerfully as I would have gone to bed, but nobody
seemed to wish for such a love or to know what to do with it!' Here is
the poor fisherman, who feels that he has no bait that the fish want.
It was not as though he caught the perch whilst the cod fought shy of
him. 'I was avoided,' he says elsewhere, 'both by the commonplace and
by those who had talent. Commonplace persons avoided me because I did
not chatter, and persons of talent because I stood for nothing--_there
was nothing in me_!' But, just as he was giving up, Mark Rutherford
felt the line tremble, and knew the ecstasy of a bite! He was suddenly
befriended. 'Oh, the transport of it!' he exclaims. 'It was as if
water had been poured on a burnt hand, or some miraculous Messiah had
soothed the delirium of a fever-stricken sufferer, and replaced his
visions of torment with dreams of Paradise.' The world holds more of
this sort of thing than we think. A writer who cannot get readers, a
preacher who cannot get hearers, a tradesman who cannot get
customers--it is the same old trouble. Fishing, fishing, fishing,
until the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. Fishing,
fishing, fishing, until the whole world seems to be pouring its
contempt upon the unhappy fisherman. Fishing, fishing, fishing, until
a man feels that there is nothing in him, nothing in him, _nothing in
him_; and the contempt of his fellows leads to the anguish and hollow
laughter of self-derision. Oh, what a bite means at such an hour!
'Blessed are they,' exclaims poor Mark Rutherford, 'who heal us of our
self-despisings! Of all services which can be done to man, I know of
none more precious.'

But even a bite may do a man a great deal of harm unless he thinks it
out very carefully. It is certainly very annoying, after waiting so
long, to feel that th